Don't Call Me That
by aly.lynn122
Summary: Garrus calls Shepard by her first name for the first time, and it doesn't go over well. (Earth-born Shepard hurt/comfort fic)


"Man, you still call her Shepard?"

Garrus looks up from his omnitool to meet Cortez's eyes, which were looking over his shoulder and at the message he was currently typing.

"I… Yes, I suppose I do," he says. Oddly enough, before now, he'd never really thought about it. Calling Shepard _Shepard_ had just been something he'd always done. All of her friends, former lovers, and crew did. It wasn't something he had ever questioned.

"That's sad, Garrus. Shepard's your lady. You need a little… familiarity," James says, one beer too deep into his stupor to speak without slurring. Garrus' mandibles tighten against his face, and his brow furrows. It is different. Most people call their lovers by their first names, or a nickname. Meanwhile, Garrus still uses the name complete strangers called her.

"I suppose I should be calling her…. Jane," he says, tasting the word in his mouth. It's unfamiliarity is striking, but the name is sweet in meaning. It is her first name, as he has seen it on all of her emails and awards. _Commander Jane Shepard_.

But to switch now? It should be a special occasion, something to show he was ready to take that leap with her. It shouldn't have been significant, considering they'd been dating since before the Collector homeworld.

"I'll use it when I take her out to dinner tonight, he promises. Cortez grins and smacks him on the shoulder in what he's come to understand is a human gesture of solidarity. He grabs another beer from the bartender, adding his empty bottle to the growing collection between the three men.

"That'a boy. Lola's gonna be thrilled." James throws back the last sip of his beer and pops the cap off another with the heel of his hand.

Garrus, despite their praise, is still nervous. Even Kaidan had called Shepard by her last name, but maybe they just never got to that level.

"Yeah," he echoes, "thrilled."

***

In the end, he doesn't have the guts to do it at dinner. She is looking at him so lovingly, caressing his arm in _just_ such a way. He doesn't want to risk ruining their night, and continues calling her Shepard up until she pins him against the wall in her cabin and grinds against him in his thin civvies.

"Ah, Jane…." he moans.

Abruptly, she stops. He opens his eyes and looks at her, finding the air cold where she backs away.

"What did you just call me?" she snaps, her teeth grinding like a misfiring turbine.

"Uh…" Garrus stutters, still whiplashed from the sudden turn of events.

"Jane?" he offers.

Her stance snaps like a livewire. One second she is standing in front of him, the next she is up the steps and heading for the door.

"Shepard… _Jane_ … wait," Garrus calls. She turns to look at him, the red around her irises glowing red in the soft light of her fish tank.

" _Don't call me that."_ _  
_  
And then she is gone, the doors whooshing shut behind her. He hears the elevator gears churning, and feels each tightened cable wrapping itself around his gut. He falls backwards onto the bed, his spurs catching on the edge of the mattress.

"EDI?"

He asks after some time.

"Yes, Garrus?" the AI prompts, her familiar voice filling the room.

"So you call me by my first name, but I can't call Shepard by hers?" he mutters.

"I didn't quite catch that," EDI replies, the speakers turning up slightly as though it is him who couldn't hear adequetely.

"Where is Shepard?"

"The Commander is currently in the shuttle bay."

"With Vega and Cortez?" he says, sitting up and pulling himself to his feet.

"Negative, both Cortez and Vega are in the Starboard Observation Deck. Do you wish me to alert someone?"

"No, EDI," Garrus sighs, "Just let her be."

***

That night, Shepard finds him in the battery late at night, scouring news reports and refugee lists for names of family and friends.

She doesn't say anything as she enters, just leans up against the wall and watches him comb through the datapads littering his work station.

"Any news?" she asks finally. He doesn't turn his head to greet her, doesn't want to send her running again, even though he knows the thought is ridiculous.

"No, none."

"You'll find them," she says, coming forward to lay a hand on his shoulder. Part of him wants to shrug it off, the other part wants to pull her closer. He settles for remaining completely still.

After a moment, Shepard sighs.

"I'm sorry,"

He turns then, finding her looking at the floor with her head turned away from him. In that moment, the choice is made for him. He risks, as he has always done for her, and turns her head towards him with a gentle talon under her chin. Her eyes are watering in the lights, glistening with unshed tears he knows will keep her up for weeks to come.

"Care to explain what exactly happened?"

He is concerned about her, but he isn't going to let her get away with that behaviour with no explanation. His confidence might not be everything he pretends it is, but he knows he didn't deserve her explosion earlier, as much as he knows he will forgive her just like she always does him. In another time, in another life, they never would have matched. But now, with the weight of the galaxy hanging on their shoulders, their shared burden has molded them into fitting puzzle pieces. Together, they are whole.

And he knows Shepard knows this too, from the way her shoulders sag and she takes a breath, her jaw moving his finger as though it is just an extension of her body.

"My name isn't Jane Shepard," she says softly.

"What is it, then?" Garrus asks, thinking perhaps Shepard was her Archangel. He wants her name, her real name, the privilege of calling to a part of her no one else knows exists. But her answer is disappointing.

"I don't know."

He pulls her close without thinking, carries her weight while she chews her words and catches her breath. He only waits, eventually, the story will come.

And it does.

"I never knew my name. I had one, probably, when I was little, but I don't remember anything before then. I remember a few months in the streets, hiding from everyone and finding food in the garbages. I remember a quarian, wearing green and carrying an old paper book, following me into an alley and attempting to coax me down from the roof I had climbed. She left after a while. I didn't stay long enough to go back…."

This is a story Garrus knows well, although not the details. Shepard was born on Earth, an orphan raised in the streets taking care of herself. It was in her file, one he'd read over in C-Sec before he joined her.

"Garrus, names are what the people we love call us. They are the way people acknowledge your existence. Up until the Reds, I didn't have anyone who cared I existed, not enough to want to get my attention, to call me close or talk to me."

He remembers the Reds, remembers the man on the Citadel asking for a favor in the name of an old gang she had survived.

"There was a fire, one night. In one of the old buildings. A bunch of kids were sleeping there, myself included. None of us talked to each other, we were all in the same position. But when the fire came, all of the older ones ran out. And the little ones, their little brothers and sisters and sometimes sons and daughters…. They just left them. They were crying, and I was trying to round them up. One little girl, she couldn't have been more than five, was coughing so much. I had to carry her on my back. I lead them out, one by one. I had to go back in three different times to get them all."

She leans against him more heavily, nestling her head into the crook of his arm. He wants to say something, wants to break the heavy silence of her memories and pull her back to the present, back to him. But he wants more to understand, to share this part of her past with her.

"On the last time, when I was making sure there was no one else, I collapsed just outside the door. Someone had called the child agency, and they came and collected all of the younger ones. A couple of the teenagers managed to convince them that they were eighteen, and they left it alone. The social workers didn't see me, I guess. I was blocked by a fallen beam. But the teenagers knew I was there. One of them picked me up, took me home, and nursed me back to health. He saved my life."

Garrus strokes a pattern up her arm with the tips of his talon, his thumb rubbing slow circles in his wake. Shepard closes her eyes, heaving a heavy breath and opening her gaze to meet his own.

"He said I was brave, and smart. He said he would give me a family, if I could help provide for them. I was young, not even in puberty yet. Of course I said yes, it was the longest someone had ever spoken to me. He was offering everything I could ever dream of."

"The 10th Street Reds?" Garrus asks, voice gentle and his subharmonics strained. It was hard to imagine her, young, lost, alone, but still Shepard. Still his Shepard herding out children everyone else had left for dead. It was a fitting origin story.

"Yes. It was them who gave me the name Shepard, after what they saw me do. I didn't know how to spell it then, and after a while the spelling just stuck. I was Shepard, it was the only name I ever had. And it stuck, defined me as a person. I was the one who would guide people, lead them from danger."

Her voice catches, and Garrus looks down to see a single tear streaking down her cheek.

"I did so many horrible things, Garrus, just because they asked me to. Because they gave me family and a home, and that was the price to pay. I…." she chokes, turning her head away again and pulling herself from his grasp. He lets her go, his arm hovering in the air a moment before it falls back to his side. Her back turned to him, he watches her swipe at her eye half-heartedly before continuing.

"I stole food, drugs, money, hurt or killed whoever got in my way. They taught me how to shoot, gave me targets to take out from other gangs. And whenever I failed… whenever we didn't have enough to eat because I had grown a conscience or just hadn't been good enough… I…"

She wraps her arms around herself, an odd pose for her, so different from her usual parade rest and commanding postures. A shaky breath shudders through her body, and Garrus steps closer. Not touching, just enough for her to feel his warmth.

"You what?" he asks. Goosebumps rise on the back of her neck where his breath caresses it, and she turns to face him. Eyes downcast, frown tight, drying tears spotting her freckled cheeks.

"I sold myself to make extra money. I was around my early teenage years the first time, maybe twelve or thirteen, and I continued doing it until one day it went too far."

She steps closer to him then, not quite touching but close enough for her breath to warm the plates beneath his tunic.

"One of my clients wanted something I refused to do. I don't remember what, but saying no was the wrong choice. He beat me within an inch of my life, I had scars up until Cerberus. And he left me in the snow in the middle of the city, bleeding in the middle of the night. I would have frozen to death, if Anderson hadn't found me."

"Anderson?" Garrus asks, trying to picture the old soldier as a younger, fresh-faced version of himself. It is hard to do, almost as hard as picturing Shepard being brutalized by a man and left for dead. His head can't equate that image with the Shepard he knows now, who headbutts Krogans who get too mouthy and goes toe-to-toe with ships that have wiped out entire races for billions of years.

"Yeah, he took me to the hospital, paid for my treatment. And when I woke up, he handed me an Alliance application and told me that there was more out there for me. When I said I couldn't read, he helped me fill it out."

Garrus pictures a young Shepard sitting in a hospital bed, her red hair concealed by bandages and her tan skin mottled with bruises, with Anderson nearby holding a datapad and entering the information for her. It is almost a comforting image, after the horrors he had just pictured prior.

"And he gave you the name Jane?"

Shepard nods, but she frowns instead of smiles.

"Not quite, but yeah. Jane Doe is what humans call our nameless women, mostly unidentified bodies we find. Shepard couldn't be a first name. So he put that as the last name, and gave me Jane as a first one. I don't know what he put for the rest of it, but Jane Shepard stuck. Not that anyone ever called me it. In the military, we all go by last names, so I never had to explain."

"Until now," Garrus finishes, guilt churning in his gut.

"It should be a name I'm proud of, one a man I look up to gave to me. But it's not. It's a name that means nothing, nobody. It's a name, even if it's only half of the name, that they give to people with no past and no future. It doesn't fit, and it never will. I'm just Shepard, that's all I've ever been, and that's who I'll always be."

She steps forward and closes the distance between them, her arms coming up to wrap around his waist. He pulls her close and tucks her against his chest, mind storming with anger, guilt, and sadness.

"Now you know," she says, looking up at him. He meets her eyes, then scoops her up into his arms, depositing her on the dashboard of his work station and kissing her passionately before pulling away.

"I love you, Shepard," he says. She leans her forehead against his own, hands curled around his shoulders. Her lips brush his plates as she speaks.

"And I love you, Garrus Vakarian."

He feels rather than sees her smile. And while her smile wasn't the brightest he had seen from her, he took comfort in knowing it was real. For tonight, it was enough.


End file.
